Moller Marketing, LLC

Moller Marketing Has Moved

2007-01-04T14:27:00.000-08:00

We have made things official and moved to www.mollermarketing.com - Go visit us and make comments about Creative Advertising Ideas

Interviewing Competitors as Brand Recognition?

2006-12-13T00:34:00.000-08:00

"If you are small and niche I don't think it hurts to link out to competing sites or even to feature their brand or their owners as content. You can get exposure and work your way up the social ladder by siphoning off their brand value. But I think there is far more value in featuring them and recommeding them than in having them mentioned in an ad. Interviewing people, for example, is an easy way to get great content and build mindshare." - Aaron Wall, www.seobook.com

Wow, this is an interesting, yet compelling strategy. As many of you know, one of my sites is www.clogon.com where I sell clogging shoes and taps. One of my competitors is Trevor Dewitt, owner of www.clogdancing.com. They don't sell clogging shoes but are #2 for traffic in the clogging industry (right behind ClogOn.com!) It would be interesting to hear his reaction when I call and ask to feature him as a "Featured Fellow Clogger". I'm sure it will get a great response and, like Aaron says, "...get exposure and work [my] way up the social ladder by siphoning off their brand value."

What do you all think? Have you seen any results from this type of marketing?

Narrowing Down Your Niche vs. Finding Suppliers

2006-12-12T16:59:00.000-08:00

So which comes first: narrowing down the niche idea or finding suppliers? This is a question that is coming to my attention more and more as I teach others how to build their own internet businesses.

Narrowing down the niche:

You want to have high demand (see www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion) - at least 16 searches per day to make the idea even worth your time
You want to have minimal competition (use google and type in allintitle:"any keyword phrase" to see what the real competition is for Search Engine Placement - my target numbers are 30,000 competitors or less; this usually means that within 2-4 months I may be close to the front page of Google if I'm aggressive with other marketing strategies
As your narrowing down the niche, you don't want to get "over excited" because the other speed bump you may run in to is....Finding Suppliers

Keyword Phrase-----digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion-----allintitle:"keyword pharse"
-----------------------------target: 16/day+ ----------------target: less than 30,000

clogging -----------------137.0/day ------------------------------37,100
clogging shoes -----------68.0/day -------------------------------730
clogging cue sheets ------23.0/day -------------------------------285

Finding Suppliers - Why not look for these first?

There are many ways to find suppliers: contact them directly, talk to competitors, use tools like TheShipper

As I think about it, why not look for suppliers first and then, when suppliers are found, think about keywords and phrases you can optimize with? To me, this seems much easier and a better way to manage time.

What are your thoughts?

How to optimize with video...

2006-12-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

I had a client ask about marketing with podcasts or video. I did some research and this is what I found - not new news, just some help.

1. Make the video quality stuff. If it's not good, it's probably not going to be worth the time invested.

2. Put the site name in the video. (Not all video farms allow links.)

Here are a few sites you can share your video with:

youtube.com
myspace.com
google.com
spikedhumor.com
revver.com (this one pays you)
metacafe.com (this one too, but I'm yet to make a dime on it)
stupidvideos.com

Here are a few websites to propagate your video:

digg.com
milkandcookies.com
reddit.com
stumbleupon.com

Do any of you have anything to add?

Linkbaiting from Aaron Wall

2006-12-04T14:42:00.000-08:00

Link Baiting, or linkbaiting, is one of the waves of the future for SEO and SMO. Below are some things I really liked from www.seobook.com.

Link Baiting
The idea of link baiting is to create a piece of content which is centered on a set demand from a specific audience. Questions to ask yourself are:

Who is the target audience?
Why would they care?
Why would they want to share your ideas?

Some common link baiting techniques

Talk about a specific target audience.
Give people a way to feel important about themselves, someone they care about, or something they feel should be important.
Take recent events and scale them out to others in your community.
Be controversial.
Be complete thorough.

Mine, Mine, Mine!

People like to view themselves as being important.
- Many bloggers search for links to their blogs on Technorati or Google Blog Search multiple times each day.
- Calling out specific people, especially with humor.
- People are more likely to believe and spread messages which reinforce their opinion.
Community involvement is important to help others identify with and feel ownership in your link bait.

Just Ask!

Ask for feedback from people who may be interested in helping you improve your idea or helping you market it.

Asking people for feedback can help others feel ownership in your idea, and is a way to pitch them on your idea without looking sleazy pitching it.

Some social news sites allow you to place voting buttons on your site. Do so on your most important ideas.
Have a friend or yourself submit your best ideas to the most authoritative and relevant social news sites.
- Ensures your story has a title that is easy to vote for.
- Ensures your story is submitted at an appropriate time.
- If you do not do it soon after mentioning a story on your own site someone else may submit for you, using a dumb title or dumb post content.

Leverage, Leverage, Leverage
Use the connections you have.

Call in favors from people you helped in the past.
Incorporate community ideas into your idea.
Leverage friends and contacts via instant message and email.
Build accounts on social news sites: www.delicious.com, www.digg.com, etc.

To read more, go to Aaron Wall's article about linkbaiting...

What I've learned from Sponsorship and Advertising Sales...

2006-11-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

Since forming a partnership with Highlight Sports about a year and a half ago, I've learned many important things about Sponsorship and Advertising Sales. Here are a few ideas:

- Instead of talking about price, talk about "return on investment" or what they want out of the sponsorship (some may not care as much about ROI - they just want to show their support and brand their company name)
- When the question is asked about cost over the phone, set up an appointment to meet in person if possible
- Ask questions about what the company does for marketing
- Take notes
- Pick their brain about how what we are doing could benefit them, if not now, later
- Tie their needs back in to the presentation
- KISS: keep it simple stupid
- Listen for buying clues
- Don't burn bridges: what may not work now could always work later if you leave a good impression.

Additional Notes I took on my learning curve:
- Mention competitors as options for sponsorship
- Use phrase like "We are considering your company as a potential sponsor..."
- Generally better to start a little high with numbers: you can always negotiate down, but not up
- Be willing to negotiate price and tools provided
- If they are hesitant with the pricing, ask something like: "Is there some things I could rearrange to make that package a better fit for you?"
- Show clients past work we've done

There are many different approaches that can be taken; these are some of the things that have worked for me. More to come....

Anyone interested in Sponsorship Sales?

2006-11-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

Here are a few things I've recently come up with about Sponsorship and Advertising Sales. Read and enjoy...

- Focus on Controllable Factors: attitude, enthusiasm, how prepared you are to answer specific questions

- Open Well: Get the prospect listening, liking you, and thinking, "Tell me more." Make sure they see the sponsorship opportunity you're offering. You have approximately 45 seconds to accomplish this phase.

- Stay Customer-Focused: First ask questions about the prospect's objectives. Make sure the presentation relates directly to their dominant reason for buying. Listen for all buying cues, diagnose objectives, prescribe optional sponsorship solutions that have been proven to maximize return on investment. (Do a survey later.)

- Stress the 3 Strongest Benefits: People buy benefits, not features. It's not what it is, it's what it does. What you are selling are consequences, so stick to the high points; don't overwhelm prospects with too much detail.

- Be Sincere: If you're truly committed to engaging in transactions that benefit everyone involved (win/wins), your good intent will shine through. No one cares about how much you know until they know how much you care.

- Master the Fundamentals: know your prospect and a bit of information about their business and industry. This knowledge combined with a mastery of selling skills and thorough knowledge of sponsorship packages will increasing closing rates.

I've found that, by implementing these things, advertisers I've worked with have been a lot more prone to re-invest with us at a later date. Here's some feedback generated from a local event: Xtreme Danzz Competition and Highlight Sports Feedback

What are your thoughts?

Local Marketing at a glance...

2006-11-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

One of the common quotes I share with clients is "Small Success leads to Big Success!" To be really good at anything takes time, effort, determination, and, bottom-line - HARD WORK! There's no such thing as "something for nothing" or "get rich quick". Granted, some may fall in to lots of money or inherit millions, but for most successful entrepreneurs, it took strategy, planning, trial and error, (especially the error), and time to make things grow and progress.

One of the things I've recently thought and read about is localized marketing. What does this mean? Why local when there is a huge "World Wide Web"?

WWW stands for the World Wide Web. However, if we are looking to build an effective internet presence, starting at the local level can be a great idea. Keep your eyes open for on and offline marketing opportunities; begin practicing localized marketing as soon as you can. Using keywords like city names, states and other related phrases within the content, meta tags and anywhere you can on your site will very easily bring your marketing down to a localized level and improve your ranking overall. A marketing strategy like this will prove longevity and success with your eCommerce business.

This is such an important factor for brick and mortar businesses that have an internet presence. As we all know, or should know, if you don't have an internet presence, you probably are maximizing all revenue building capabilities. In such a large corporate world, it seems like there’s only a few companies that own everything - Can you say 'monopoly'? The best news is that the internet has given us an edge on cost effective business marketing; now, if done correctly, internet marketing can help local businesses stay afloat and potentially expand and progress.

What are your thoughts? What examples have you seen of localized marketing? Here are some I've seen:

http://www.eplanit.biz/blog - SEO Blog | Utah Search Engine Optimization | SEO Tips | SEO Information

http://www.doorcountyreviews.com - Door County Reviews | Family Vacation Destination

http://www.fishingzoo.com - Surf & Maine Fishing | Fish Product Supply | Tackle | Information

More information will be coming so come back soon...

(portions of information from http://blog.prosperlearning.com/ecommerce/?p=30)

PubCon: 10 Tips for Successful Innovation

2006-11-14T13:53:00.000-08:00

Some of my colleagues are at the PubCon event in Las Vegas today and this was a current update I just received:

Guy Kawasaki gave a detailed overview covering ten specific points that innovative companies should heed when developing new products and services.

#1) Make Meaning - One of the most important keys to innovation is making meaning. As an innovator, developing meaningful products is key to long-term success. The goal of any innovation should be to improve people's lives and make them more productive.

Kawasaki elaborates, "We thought MSDOS was a crime against humanity. Apple made things to solve that problem."

Venture capitalists are looking for people who are interested in "making meaning" with their innovative strategies. If you are looking for VC funding and you're focused on flipping the company within three years and making a fortune, the best kinds of investors are not going to be interested.

#2) Make a Mantra - A company's mantra shouldn't consist of a superfluous mission statement, as these are often too long and not memorable or indicative of where an innovator's focus lies. Instead, come up with two or three words that simply explain why you exist. For example:

eBay - Democratize Commerce
FedEx - Peace of Mind

(See www.ClogOn.com - "keep clogging strong!" - This is the "mantra"!)

Kawasaki reiterates this philosophy, "Mantras, ladies and gentlemen, not mission statements. Mission statements are bullsh#@."

#3) Jump to the Next Curve - Don't limit your innovations to incremental changes of existing products, look ahead and think about what kinds of problems could be solved or needs met by a whole new product.

"If you're the daisy wheel printer company 15 years ago, you shouldn't be thinking about innovation in terms of 5 new font sizes of Helvetica font, you should be thinking about laser printer," notes Kawasaki.

#4) Roll the DICEE - Guy Kawasaki's Acronym:

Depth: Great products and services are deep and will grow with you along the way. Take the Reef Fanning Sandal, for example, there is a bottle opener built in to the sole of the sandal. It serves more than one purpose; it covers your feet and opens your drinks. That's what makes it a deep product.

Intelligent: You have to actively anticipate the products and services that people will need. The Panasonic BF-104 flashlight works with three different battery sizes. Panasonic recognized a common problem; people routinely have batteries, and flashlights, but not the right batteries for their flashlight. So they created a flashlight that accepts and works with three different size batteries in anticipation of this dilemma.

Completeness: Lexus doesn't just sell cars; they take a holistic approach by focusing on excellence in presales, post sales, service and many other areas. By the same token Adobe Photoshop is a good program by itself, but it's the plugins that help it truly shine. Always remember that ancillary services are huge.

Elegance: Look no further than the iPod Nano. Previous generation Japanese mp3 players had been around for years. These devices came loaded with lots of buttons, but Apple designed one wheel to do serve all the same functions -- making the iPod far more elegant.

Emotive: Harley Davidson is a sterling example of the emotive approach to innovation. Like Harley, companies should seek to create an emotional attachment to their products and/or services, generating brand loyalty in the process.

#5) Don't Worry, Be Crappy - Realistically, we live in a marketplace where you never have to say your sorry. It's a fact of life in the modern world that you ship first and test later.

Kawasaki reminisces about the Macintosh, "If we had waited for tech to catch up and get ready for the first Mac, we would have been Xerox part two. It never would have made it of f the ground. Certainly we could have waited for better memory better processing and all that but you can't let that type of thing serve as a roadblock to getting your product or idea out there."

#6) Polarize People - Don't be afraid to polarize the consumer base. In fact, great products frequently generate polarity among tech communites. When it comes to Mac and TiVo, one will usually find strong opinions on both sides of the spectrum.

Kawasaki states, "I love TV. It's almost a sin to live in California and admit you love TV because it ruins children's minds, but I love TV. Frankly i think spongebob prevents child abuse, but since I have TiVo, I have not watched a single commercial in months. I watch commercials on exactly 1 day of the year - Super Bowl Sunday. So, obviously a lot of people hate the TiVo for that very reason."

#7) Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom - Even if the wrong people are your customers in large numbers, you still don't have a problem. You have to plant flowers everywhere, because you don't necessarily know who your next or best customers will be.

"I believe in God, because there is absolutely no other explanation for Apple's survival. In the last couple of years we learned a lot about God. We learned he loves digital music and he wants everybody else to love digital music - and pay 99 cents per song," asserts Kawasaki.

Go to the people that are buying the product and find out why; play to that. Kawaski elaborates, "Don't try to convert atheists. It's difficult to convert atheists to a new religion."

Instead, focus on your current customers or customers that buy a competing product. Ask them what they like about the product and follow those leads.

Just because your product is popular with people you didn't expect it to be popular with, it doesn't automatically mean failure. You might just have to shift your ideas a little.

#8) Churn, Baby Churn - Part of being an innovator is constantly living in denial. You can't listen to people that say "you can't do this" or "you shouldn't do that" or "you can't launch until you have such and such feature". (Attitude, attitude, attitude!)

Once you ship, then you can begin to listen to the things that people say.

You can't develop version 2.0 of your product until you settle on version 1.0. That's when you can identify the shortcomings of your product or recognize future features/aspects that would be desirable to the consumer.

#9) Niche Thyself - When you aren't unique but offer a valuable product, you have to compete on price. If you produce a unique product without value, you have a corner on the market, but nobody wants what you have to offer. So obviously, you want to offer a unique product that also has high value.

You should follow the 10/20/30 rule when pitching an idea to VCs.

• 10 - the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation; that's it
• 20 - number of minutes to present the 10 slides as getting set up will normally take you 40 minutes
• 30 - often the optimal size font for presentation slides; find the oldest person in the audience and divide their age by 2 to find an optimal font size

#10) Don't Let the Bozos Drive You Down - You have to ignore the naysayers when bringing you innovation to fruition. Usually, there are two types of bozos - the loser
and the well-to-do slickster rich guy, the latter being the most dangerous. You can't assume someone is smart just because they are rich.

As an innovator, the words "can't" and "shouldn't" have to be expunged from your vocabulary.

This is great stuff...Hope you all enjoy!

The Power of Branding!

2006-11-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

I wanted to ask some questions, share some insites, and just vent about branding...

What is branding?
Where do I start?
Why is branding so helpful? or Is it really that helpful?
Is branding something you can track?
Can you get an ROI on branding?
Why do companies choose branding as a marketing strategy and tactic?
Are there just long term effects of branding or can they be short term as well?

This is what en.wikipedia has to say about a brand:

"A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme...A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace..."

Branding is a key factor in business building.

Need I say more? Does anyone not know what this is? It's extremely effective "branding"!

I'm reading a marketing book right now that talks about the importance of developing a marketing strategy before you create marketing tactics. This means that you need to know WHY you are doing what you plan to do before you start implementing specific marketing tactics. Creating a brand starts with a well thought out mission statement and/or vision. You must answer the question:

How is what I'm planning on doing going to help others?

If you are able to answer this question in two or three sentences and feel strongly about it, you have taken one of the first big steps in building a brand.

More to come...What are your thoughts?

Moller Marketing Mayhem

2006-11-04T21:52:00.000-08:00

Don't know why it has taken me so long to do this. I think the inspiration came from a good friend of mine, Mr. Stull, owner and operator of www.exceptionalconsultants.com. He and I were having a talk about the power of blogging the other day and it was probably one of our best discussions about the power of the internet and getting your name and business out there. Afterall, I've been in this industry for over 6 years - it's about time I just start recording ideas that come to mind, share them with the internet community, and start implementing all of them.

I found this cool article at howstuffworks.com and it really hit me:

A company buys advertising for one of two reasons:

Branding
Direct sales
Branding refers to the process of impressing a company name or a product name onto society's collective brain. Let's say you have come up with a new brand of soda, or you are opening a new restaurant, or you are selling a new widget. You want to get the product's name (and sometimes the product's features and benefits) firmly planted in people's heads. This is branding.
Branding happens with both new and existing products. When you see a billboard that says nothing but "Coke" on it, or you see a NASCAR car that says "Tide" on the hood, or you see a feel-good ad on TV about a car company or an oil company but there's no mention of a product, that is branding. The advertiser does not necessarily expect you to do anything today -- the advertiser simply wants to impress itself on your consciousness.
On the other hand, a direct sales ad is an ad that is trying to get you to do something today, right now, as you look at the ad. The advertiser wants you to:

Click on the ad
Call an 800 number
Drive immediately to the store

...or do some other active thing so that you buy something, download something or sign up for something today. The advertiser counts the direct responses to the ad and measures the effectiveness of the ad by those responses.

What branding advertisers came to feel about banner ads is that banner ads are not the most effective vehicle for branding. Relative to a magazine ad or a TV ad, banner ads are small and easily ignored.

What direct sales advertisers came to feel about banner ads is that the response rate for banner ads is low. For most banner ads, the industry average seems to hover between two and five clicks per 1,000 impressions of the ad. That is, if a banner ad appears on 1,000 Web pages, between two and five people will click on the ad to learn more.

Those five clicks per thousand impressions don't have much value to most advertisers. The reason is because those five clicks will not all generate sales. Out of 100 clicks, perhaps one person will actually do the desired thing (buy something, download something, etc.).

An Example
Here's an example. Let's say that a publisher wants people to buy a book, and hopes to increase sales of the book through advertising. The publisher has budgeted $3.00 per copy of the book to spend on advertising. If the publisher is paying $30 per 1,000 impressions for banner ads and purchases 100,000 impressions for $3,000, here is what happens:

The banner ad appears 100,000 times.
Let's say the response rate is five clicks per 1,000 impressions, so 500 people click on the ad during the time the 100,000 total impressions are running.
If two percent of those 500 people actually purchase the book, that results in 10 purchases.
The publisher had to pay ($3,000/10) $300 for each book purchased through that ad.

Obviously, paying $300 to sell one book is not a good economic model for a publisher, especially since the budget is $3.00 per book. For this type of advertising to work for the publisher, the publisher would need to pay 30 cents per 1,000 impressions, rather than 30 dollars.

The Result
So banner ad rates began to decline. Today, if you shop around, you can buy banner ads from thousands of Web sites or brokers for 50 cents or so per thousand impressions -- which is pretty much exactly what they are worth to a person who is trying to sell something with banner ads using a direct sales model.

It is possible for some Web sites to charge more than 50 cents per 1,000 impressions. For example, the top 100 or so Web sites can charge a premium because of their size. There is also a process called targeting. For example, if you want to sell a GPS, you can advertise on the HowStuffWorks GPS article and get a targeted audience for your ad, which will typically increase the click-through and response rate for the ad. Yahoo and many search engines target their banner ads to the search words people type in, and they charge more for these targeted ads. But for most other Web sites, there is very little money to be made from banner ads.

In order to charge more than 50 cents per thousand impressions, Web sites have to offer ads that either:

Have a lot more branding power
Get a much higher click-through rate
Therefore, you find many different advertising formats and experiments on the Web today." (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-advertising3.htm)

All I can say to this is AMEN!! These are things I have passion for: advertising, branding, target audiences, marketing, sales, commerce, ecommerce, win/win situations, partnerships, joint ventures. Another friend of mine, Ron Robinson of www.awakeandarise.com told me recently, "Being passionate about what you do is so very important to success in any endeavor. That's one of the reasons your success is increasing."

So anyway, this is a start of something new (as if I didn't have enough to do already!)

Please leave comments.